In "The Martian", Mark Watney deals with a lot of dangerous situations - food and communications being a couple of them. But what if his camp got hit by a solar storm? How could he protect himself in that situation?

Solar eruptions can cause damage to people and spacecraft. The radiation that flows during these events can short-out sensitive electronics and give astronauts an overdose of radiation, if they're not careful.

We have a lot of warning systems set up at Earth to help our planet (and the satellites and astronauts in orbit) out, but Mars presents a special challenge: it's much further away. Radiation studies of the surface are only just beginning, so we don't know about long-term exposure levels. There are no people there (at least yet), but NASA and other space agencies have a fleet of spacecraft there carrying out observations to work out how best to protect them.

Simply speaking, there are two kinds of solar eruptions. Solar flares are a quick flash that travel at the speed of light, taking eight minutes to reach Earth and at least 14 minutes to get to Mars. That's not a lot of time to scramble out of the way, says Alex Young, associate director for science in the heliophysics science division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

"If I was going to be (an astronaut) on Mars, I would have some sort of monitor on Mars. I would be looking at the sun on Mars," Young told Discovery News. Young suggests a future mission - much like what is portrayed in "The Martian" - would include a telescope to keep an eye on what the sun is doing.

Then, if the astronauts saw trouble coming, they would go to radiation-resistant bunkers, such as underground structures or those built with radiation shielding. Water is one possibility, and there are also researchers at the NASA Langley Research Center investigating new radiation-resistant materials, such as nylon embedded with boron and nitrogen.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a second type of solar eruption, are clouds of particles that speed along quickly, taking a several hours to a few days to get to our planet. For Mars, there's 50 percent more warning, meaning it might take the fastest-moving CMEs 27 to 30 hours for the particles to get there. But they're higher-energy and longer lasting than the solar flare, which could lead to higher radiation exposure.

While humans take shelter, for spacecraft in orbit it's best to shut non-essential functions off until the storm has passed, Young says. So far the approach seems successful, as colleague Antti Pulkkinen at Goddard says no Martian spacecraft has been totally disabled by the sun, yet.

The sun may be an average star when compared to the menagerie of stars that exist in our galaxy, but to Earth and all life on our planet, the sun is the most important object in the Universe. However, regardless of its importance and close proximity, our nearest star holds many mysteries that continue to fox solar physicists after decades of modern studies with cutting-edge observatories. One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the sun is the underlying mechanisms that drive solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Monday evening (EST), the sun reminded us that it hasn't quite finished with the current solar maximum (of solar cycle 24), unleashing a powerful X4.9 solar flare -- the biggest of 2014. An armada of space telescopes witnessed the event, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory that can spy the sun's temper tantrums in astounding high definition.
Shown here, 5 of the 10 filters from the SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument are featured, showing the sun's lower corona (the solar multimillion degree atmosphere) through 5 wavelengths; each wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light representing a different plasma temperature and key coronal features -- such as coronal loops (highlighted here in the 'yellow' 171A filter) and ejected plasma that formed a CME.

At 7:13 p.m. EST (00:13 UT, Feb. 25) -- pictured here on the far left -- the active region (AR) 1990 was crackling with activity. Then, as magnetic field lines from the sun's interior forced together and through the solar photosphere, large-scale reconnection events occurred. Reconnection is a magnetic phenomena where field lines "snap" and reconnect, releasing huge quantities of energy in the process. At 7:44 p.m. EST (00:44 UT) -- second frame from the right -- a kinked coronal loop can be seen rising into the corona. At 7:59 p.m. EST (00:59 UT) -- far right -- solar plasma contained within the magnetic flux is accelerated to high energy, generating powerful x-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation, creating the X-class flare.

The X4.9 flare was caught through the range of SDO fliters, including this dramatic view as seen through the 131A filter. The flare was so bright that photons from the flare overloaded the SDO's CCD inside the AIA instrument, causing the signal to "bleed" across the pixels. This bleeding effect is common for any optical instrument observing powerful solar flares.

Intense coronal activity is often associated with active regions -- the active lower corona is pictured here, left. In this case, the flare erupted from AR1990, at the limb of the sun. Also associated with active regions are sunspots, dark patches observed in the sun's photosphere (colloquially known as the sun's "surface") -- pictured right. The sun's cooler photosphere has been imaged by a different SDO instrument called Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which detects the intensity of magnetic fields threading though the sun's lower corona and photosphere.

In the case of AR1990, a large sunspot can be seen at the base of the coronal loops that erupted to generate the powerful flare. This is a prime example of how sunspots can be used to gauge solar activity and how they are often found at the base of intense coronal activity and flares.

The HMI monitors magnetic activity across the disk of the sun and can also generate a picture on the direction of the magnetic field polarity. In this observation of the sun's magnetic field around the time of the recent X-class flare, other active regions can be easily seen -- intense white and black regions highlighting where magnetic field lines emerge and sink back into the sun's interior in active regions.

The joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which has been watching the sun since 1996, also spotted the flare, tracking a CME that was generated shortly after. Seen here by SOHO's LASCO C2 instrument, that monitors the interplanetary environment surrounding the sun for CMEs and comets, a growing bubble of solar plasma races away from the sun.

Approximately an hour after the flare, the CME grew and continued to barrel into interplanetary space. Space weather forecasters don't expect that this CME will interact with the Earth's atmosphere as it is not Earth-directed. This observation was captured by SOHO's LASCO C3 instrument -- an occulting disk covers the sun to block out any glaring effect.
By combining observations by the SDO, SOHO and other solar observatories, the connection between the sun's internal magnetic "dynamo", the solar cycle, flares and CMEs, solar physicists are slowly piecing together what makes our nearest star tick, hopefully solving some of the most persistent mysteries along the way.